TL;DR: In Bannerlord once you take a settlement, it instantly becomes part of your faction. This results in snowballing since the attacker faction immediatly have acess to the settlement's resources and is allowed to take a great ammount of territory from a weakened enemy without peacing from the war. By contrast, in real life medieval times provinces where only lawfully added to another realm after they were explicitally given in a legal treaty. Probably a system where expecified settlements are awarded only during a peace deal might be the way to deal with the snowballing problem, make the game deeper and historically accurate.
https://preview.redd.it/sh4vjvhqjjz51.jpg?width=855&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=263c63a564baa65b700d1280861fcf1db9ec549b
Introduction
We all know how Bannerlord gets stale at end game when a Faction owns half of the map. Everybody who played for a few hours went through it. A weakened Faction, with a bunch of noble defection, money problems and too many casualties are pretty much a free prey to be stomped. Its hard for it to not lose more settlements and even harder to make a comeback.
I was brainstorming on why such snowballing happens in Bannerlord and not so much in some games like Crusader Kings 2 / 3 (obligatory comparisson) and Europa Universalis 4.
Thats when I understood the main balancing problem: once you siege down a settlement in Bannerlord, it instantly becomes part of your faction.
How Bannerlord currently deals with land occupation
https://preview.redd.it/tm52w9fsjjz51.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=da8b0d9ebebadbb91b1990a645fbb3e382d96c86
After sucessfully sieging a settlement, it flips instantly to your Faction. Sure, the settlement will be weakened and if you actually want to be owner of it you have to win a election against other "claimants".
But your Faction will have acess to the majority of the settlement's resources to fuel the war effort against the already weak enemy. From taxation, recruiting and trading, almost everything will be availiable after conquering. The entire place instantly becomes loyal to their new nation, virtually no question asked.
This also means if you still have enough money and troops, you can conquer 2/3 of an enemy land AND later ask for money tributes to make peace too. Since the land you occupied isnt part of the peace treaty, you can bleed the enemy dry. This can make an already big Faction into an unstopable war machine.
https://preview.redd.it/5idmafitjjz51.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f459a3ce4e663c91d5c540d3ed87b87b9a38b1b9
And do you think anyobody in Calradia cares if you take 3, 5 or even 10 settlement in one war? Nope, nobody bats an eye. The most logical thing to happen would be either to other factions to be outraged from such expansion or to have a limit of how much land to take in a war, but there is no such thing.
Legal explanation on how real land occupations work (Boring stuff)
https://preview.redd.it/ll2ukbx3kjz51.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=308283e353777862d3bd8652dcdc800b01da952e
Game mechanics aside, having a province being legally considered part of your realm after being sieged down and without no peace treaty its not historically accurate based on records we have from the medieval era. During these times and even up to this day, land occupation worked similar to the De Jure and De Facto concepts.
Rhetoric question: If a bunch of guys went to your house, kicked you out and stayed living there, would it make your now occupied house into... their house?
Answer: Well, yes but actually no.
The first thing we have to understand is that there is a difference between De Jure and De Facto.
De jure means "by law" and means something recognize by law. In the example above, you are the De Jure owner of house even if someone forcefully kicked you out. Thats because you have the ownership papers, you are recognized as the legitimazed owner by the goverment and by your peers.
De Facto means "by fact" and represent something taking place in reality even if it is not recognize by law. Again in example above, the De Facto owner of the house is the guys who are forcefully staying in your house. If you ask anybody from your goverment or your peers they all will agree that the house is yours, because you have the legimitime legal right to own the property. But undeniably, who is currently controlling your house are the invaders
But hey, maybe the guys that occupied your house made an offer you cant refuse and you want to legally give the house to then. Ignoring for the sake of the argument anyone would probably call the police on these crazy burglars LOL :) , how could you legitimally give your house to them? Simple. You write legal papers transfering the ownership to them. Now these guys in occupying your house own the property by legitimate means, as the De Jure owners.
I hope you understood how this example applies to Mount & Wars and peace treaties and how it could be more like it.
How other games deals with land occupation
(Europa Universalis 4, the Grand Strategy game Ive played the most)
Everything I will say down bellow kinda applies to all of the Paradox's games with a few exceptions. In contrast with Mount & Blade, games like the Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings series uses a system of land occupation more close to the reality "de jure" and "de facto" thing Ive explained right above.
After sieging down a province, it does not become automatically yours. It still is owned by the enemy BUT is occupied by you, the invader. You can maybe raze or raid it, but the major owner interactions cannot be done util the war is over and the province is explicitally given to you during the peace treaty.
Talking about about peace treaty, since you dont get ownership of provinces after siege, the occupied land and stuff like battles wons counts as war score. War score represents how well someone is doing in war and can be used to while making peace to receive gold tributes, make useful treaties, receive land, etc.
https://preview.redd.it/n8mlh399kjz51.jpg?width=956&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=486a72b70d9222088f11201754bc7e769fea24ac
Finally, you cannot conquer an entire empire in one war just even if you have occupied all provinces. There is a limit of how much stuff you can take from the enemy in the peace deal, since every consession has its price and the max ammount of War Score is 100%.
And also, if you try to take too much land other nations receive a Agressive Expansion penalty. If Agressive Expansion reaches above a certain value, allows other nations to join a "Defensive Pact" / "Coallitiion" to deal with your megalomaniac ambitions.
Conclusion
To fix such a big problem like snowballing we need more than adjustments to existing systems. The current way of how settlements are occupied and peace treaties are done work naturally in favor of strong Factions steamrolling weak Factions.
I think Taleworlds Developers could take example of some other games to develop new system similar to the concepts explained in this thread. Maybe one of them take it as an inspiration for a deeper, snowballing proof and historic accurate peace treaty / settlement occupation mechanic ;)
Yes, the other games examples are very different from Bannerlord.
And no, I'm not implining that anyone should blatantly copy features from any competitor company's game.
The only thing I want is for the game to be even more fun than its already is :D
![The Highlands [Speed Mapping]](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/HpZhTAIw7vwTpVrn-VXBfZzMVjLP2CBSWfXFY74HTQQ.jpg "The Highlands [Speed Mapping]")
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